Hotel customer experience design strategies that reduce friction

Today, hotel stays are built around several key stages and shaped by the interactions guests have, from booking to check-out.

Thoughtful hotel customer experience design can be the difference between a good stay and a memorable one. Hospitality businesses, especially hotels, need to rethink their environments and service flows to meet the expectations of tech-savvy, time-sensitive travellers. 

Poor design leads to real-world issues, from slow check-ins to customers simply not being able to find their way to their room. The total effect of this is frustrated guests who have no intention of rebooking.

Customer experience (CX) design that is done well takes into account several factors that provide a seamless flow when connected, such as:

• Space layout
• Digital integration
• Roles of team members
• Guest autonomy

Whether it’s just redesigning a reception area or undergoing more comprehensive work, renovations supported by self-check-in kiosks and other technology can not only transform the guest experience but also the entire fabric of your hotel.

We’ll explore the practical, scalable solutions that hotel operators can explore for their space, ideal for those who need to address problems they’re yet to define clearly.

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Why Customer Experience Design is Becoming a Greater Priority for Hotels

Guests looking to book a business trip or weekend away have never had more hotel options to choose from. The sheer variety of established chain hotels and quirky independent boutiques has totally altered the hospitality landscape. 

This crowded market has left hotel customer experience design as a key differentiating factor. This, combined with guests’ existing preferences toward personalisation, speed, and seamless services in other areas of life, means design takes centre stage.

Design is so much more than what looks and feels good; it is the key to operational efficiency, impacting revenue and brand reputation. Hotels need to think of design in terms of service flow and digital integration, including logos, colour schemes and experiences that will make their stay unforgettable.

Guests across most demographics expect digital-first solutions that mirror the intuitiveness and ease of other consumer tech, such as Uber or Deliveroo, be they self-check-in kiosks or in-room devices to control lighting and TVs.

When faced with complex challenges around environments and customer experience, it can be tricky for hotel operators to know where to start ‘re-designing’. Often, it’s because they’re not aware of the technologies and methods, both simple and complex, that are available to them.

How to Get Started with Experience Design

To bring new experience design strategies to life, it's important to first find the problem.
 

• What is at the core of all this?
• Are wait times too high? 
• Are staff burnt out?
• Is revenue being lost unnecessarily?

Finding the answers to these questions will guide your decisions.

Alignment and buy-in from all stakeholders are essential, particularly in the operations, digital, and property teams. Getting these teams on board gives these strategies the best chance to succeed. This can be done through a well-executed pilot that grows internal confidence by showing a small sample size of results early.

Being able to attribute new tech to revenue growth helps anchor all strategies to metrics. Defining what success looks like helps to demonstrate the return on investment to the C-suite. Be it average check-in times, reduced complaints, or increased upsell conversion rates.

Work with partners such as Evoke, who bring deep industry experience, a broader, more consultative approach, and a record of delivering customer experience strategies to life through integrated kiosks, software, and digital signage.

4 Key Principles of Smart Hotel Experience Design

What, then, does smart hotel design look like? In practical terms, it's about leveraging the configuration of a particular space in a hotel to benefit the customer’s experience. 

Here are some key principles to consider when looking at renovating the design of a hotel:

1. Design should always help guests flow through the hotel without the need for assistance from staff. Supporting operational flow, making it easy for guests to navigate to lifts and rooms, and ensuring they can complete tasks autonomously, such as checking in, is essential.
2. Even the best-designed hotels will have queues. Managing the flow and placement of these queues is another design factor that can impact the guest experience. Avoid placing queues across entrances and exits, which serve to just cause unnecessary friction between guests.
3. Leaning into environmental cues is an effective way of countering sign fatigue. Lighting and materials can help to section zones of hotels, allowing guests to intuitively move through the space without needing to ask staff for directions. While subtle, environmental cues help to create various frameworks for guests to move within.
4. Opening up reception areas into multi-use zones can help cater to different guests' needs. Quiet waiting areas with charging points can sit neatly next to group check-in pods and self-check-in kiosks. Opening the reception up like this reflects how guests use hotel spaces, allowing them to move between relaxation, connection, and transaction.

Through clever zoning and technology, hotels can allow guests the freedom to stay the way they want.

Mapping the Hotel Guest Journey to Maximise Every Touchpoint

For your design strategies and CX to have the desired effect, it's important to break up the guest experience into distinct phases. 

They are:

• Booking and pre-arrival
• Arrival
• The stay
• Post-stay

Within these four phases are an array of opportunities to remove barriers and friction and turn them into unforgettable customer interactions. 

There will be operational pain points within these four phases that can be addressed. For instance, during ‘Booking and pre-arrival’, there may be issues with payment options on the website. During ‘Arrival’, long queues may form during periods when multiple guests want to check in. 

By mapping the journey out in this granular way, it becomes easier to turn good design into solutions.

Where to implement new design strategies should be data-led. If average wait times for maintenance requests are not satisfactory, efforts should be made to redesign this process, or if check-in is taking too long and putting too much pressure on the front desk, integrating self-check-in kiosks into reception areas can help to alleviate this.

Industry leaders such as Premier Inn are already making changes, adopting a digitally enabled, hybrid approach to check in. They have integrated self-check-in kiosks and software alongside human support so that guests can leverage the speed of technology with the help of a team member should they need it.

Lessons in design strategies can be taken from other industries, too. Retail stores and hospitality businesses such as quick service restaurants (QSRs) have radically changed the guest journey, optimising it for the better by using well-placed kiosks to allow customers to self-order, leaving team members to focus on delivering the product quicker. 

These methods can be replicated by hotels to enhance the customer journey and ease pressure on staff.

How Physical Design Impacts Operational Efficiency

In addition to looking unpleasant, poor hotel design quickly creates significant delays, an overburdened workforce, and negative first impressions, which do nothing but set the bar low. 

Most of this, however, can be solved through better spatial planning.

Many hotels in the UK, including Premier Inn, now have integrated ground floors which combine the reception with dining and leisure zones, creating a multi-purpose space. 

With clear visual and physical boundaries, guests can seamlessly interact with each space, moving from the check-in area to the bar, for instance, in just a few steps. 

These spaces help to improve the flow of guests who intuitively know where to go without having to ask staff. 

Within these spaces, modular furniture and technology, such as kiosks, that can be moved to meet occupancy and seasonal demands, is something to be considered, too. Having an agile space helps to reduce congestion and frustration during the busier times.

Physical design can also incorporate smart, thoughtful touches that a guest wouldn’t know they’d need until they do. Charging points, luggage drop-off zones, and digital concierge services are all features that require little to no footprint and increase guest independence.

The Role of Kiosks in Guest Experience and Operational Transformation

Kiosks help speed up check-in by offering an intuitive experience that feels familiar to guests accustomed to using self-service check-in technology in other environments, such as those found in McDonald's. Familiarity doesn’t mean uniformity, though. 

Our kiosks, for example, can be custom-designed to reflect a brand’s character, ensuring they look and feel right at home without sacrificing that intuitive user experience.

Staff are freed up from distributing key cards and can instead deliver higher-value interactions while guests move more autonomously through carefully designed processes.

Easy-to-use software gives hotels a greater number of opportunities to upsell and cross-promote services. As users navigate through the self-check-in process, options to upgrade rooms, purchase breakfast, or redeem offers can all be presented to the guest.

Customer behaviour data can also be collected through kiosks, identifying trends such as common check-in times and upsell conversion rates. These insights can be refined in both physical and digital service strategies, proving that when kiosks are thoughtfully integrated, they are core to business transformation.

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